Project Garage - 1971 Dodge Demon

Dennis Jones, Bill Carter, Kenny Youngblood. You've seen their stripes, candies, and panels on stunning nitro contraptions and slick cruisers somewhere without even knowing it. Forty years later, what those paint slingers left behind is influencing the next generation of builders and dreamers. Our 1971 Demon build harnessed the energy from several Southern California disciples of today's underground chopper and street-racing culture, including fabricators from Circle City Hot Rods, welding and flame from Grant Petersen of Born Free and FMA, Danny and his crew from Elite Restorations, and finally, The Harpoon, who executed the colors and patterns that are required to get a car from just good to head-turning, button-popping, panty-dropping great.

3/501. Before you get stare-quality paint, you need good prep. It’s both the most expensive and most important part of the job. The guys at Elite Restoration do not scuff and shoot a car with the interior in it and the doors on; they blow it apart and take the finish down to bare metal to see what needs to be fixed. Under this innocent black primer was “about a gallon” of filler, rust, and some missing sheetmetal. But it looked good on Craigslist.

4/502. After the paint and filler had been ground off with stripping pads, the damage from years on the road was evident. If the car was clean, the paintjob would have cost about $8,500–$10,000. That number includes disassembly of everything—primer, sanding, paint, polish, and reassembly. If the car is ugly, the cost to fix problems is about five hours of shop-rate time for a dent the size of your hand.

5/503. There are a couple of things going on here. The bluish dots are from torch and hammer work to remove dents. The heat from the flame spreads the molecules in the sheetmetal, allowing it to be stretched or shrunken back into the original shape, depending on what hammer you use. Below that, the sheetmetal was stitched back together with patch panels where rust had eaten it away.

6/504. Major repairs like patches and rust are covered with Duraglass, a filler mixed with fiberglass that makes it strong. Elite’s Praveen Singh uses 40-grit dry sandpaper to knock down the high spots. “It’s like cement, bro!”

7/505. The guys at Elite removed the front fenders and doors to be stripped and repaired. This also allows the jambs to be repaired, primed, and painted. The panels are skim-coated with Rage Evercoat, a lightweight filler that can be sanded with 80-grit and finished with 150-grit.

8/506. The first coat from a gun is an etching primer that is designed to stick to bare metal and filler. It is followed by several coats of urethane primer filler directly on top of it. In this case, about four coats.

9/507. A guide coat is a contrasting color of paint sprayed on top of the primer to find high and low spots in the finish. This is simple black lacquer spray paint from a can. With the guide coat on and the primer dry, the car is ready for block sanding.

10/508. “The car can be a little wavy and still look good if the lines are straight. A car with no waves and straight lines looks great,” says Santiago Andrede at Elite. Getting the bodylines straight is the secret to a great-looking paintjob. Here, Singh used tape on the Demon’s four major bodylines. This is where an experienced painter makes the difference. The lines need to be laser straight.

12/5010. Here you can see where the tape line was moved from the lower panel, where there was no more guide coat, to the upper panel that needed to be sanded.

13/5011. On the second pass, 400-grit sandpaper was used for block-sanding. This process takes about 40 shop hours to get right. Elite gets it right.

14/5012. Every time the sandpaper grit becomes finer, the car needs to be sprayed with more guidecoat and re-taped.

15/5013. Here you can see a low spot. To get rid of it, the car needs to be re-primered, re-taped, and block-sanded again. Repeat!

16/5014. After the body guys are satisfied that the lines are crisp and the panels are straight, the car is wet-sanded with 600-grit to remove the fine scratches that might show up in the base coat. Finally, it’s time for color.

17/5015. With the primer sanded, the car was rolled into the paint booth to get jambed. You can see where any factory joints were covered in seam sealer.

19/5017. The doors were painted at the same time as the jambs to catch everything up. Singh also painted the metal dash, glovebox door, and any other small parts that needed color.

20/5018. This is a metallic paint, so the car needs to be assembled and painted as a whole so the flow of the metallic matches. Axalta recommended one and a half coats.

21/5019. After the paint kicked off overnight, it was wet-sanded with 800 to get rid of any leftover sanding scratches, and the panels were installed and realigned to get ready for The Harpoon to add some art.

22/5020. The Harpoon has a good eye and a steady hand. All of the lines on the car were hand-layed using 3M green tape.

23/5021. There are a couple of tricks. To get the panels even, The Harpoon uses the same number of tape sections stacked back to back.

24/5022. The negative space under the paper will be body color when this job is done. The exposed sheetmetal will get The Harpoon’s custom-mixed metallic and candy colors. Note the natural pattern on the paper job where the car’s panels are created by the bodylines.

25/5023. The first step is the lace job. The Harpoon found this pattern at a granny fabric story called Fabric Land in Orange, California. He bought about five yards for about $35.

26/5024. The lace was taped around the edges and glued to the car using 3M Super 77 adhesive. The Harpoon sprayed the glue on the lace “deep and dark” then layed it on the hood. You get one shot at it.

27/5025. The first coat of paint was a solvent-based Axalta binder and balancer mixed with True Blue Candy concentrate to make what The Harpoon calls a candy carrier or intercoat clear. It’s basically a tinted clear basecoat.

28/5026. The Harpoon pulled the lace off the car almost immediately after one coat of True Blue Candy. The paint and glue leave a sticky residue that can be cleaned with mineral spirits, soap, and water after it dries. Anything harsher will smear the pattern.

29/5027. Using the same True Blue Candy, The Harpoon put a hard fade on the edges of the lace to give the panel some depth. Over that, The Harpoon sprayed Laser Blue Candy to soften the blend.

30/5028. With the lace done, The Harpoon layed a coat of Deep Saffire Metallic basecoat from a Chrysler catalog over the exposed outlines of body to get the panels and stripes to appear.

31/5029. You can see the original factory “Coke bottle” clearly in the negative space on the Demon. The inspiration for this car was the ’70s Funny Cars that had these types of panel treatments.

32/5030. The lace is True Blue Candy with Laser Blue Candy outlines. The rear valance and panel outlines are Deep Saffire Metallic. The light color is the Blue Fire Metallic base. It all adds up to a lot of depth and color.

33/5031. They call them Freak Dots, and they are created by pulling the trigger on the gun all the way, quickly letting go to about half-pulled and letting the air pressure spread the paint into a dot, bubble, or star. “This is about gun control,” says The Harpoon. The dots are a mixture of True Blue and Laser Blue Candy.

34/5032. With the graphics in place, the car was rolled back into the paint booth for clearcoat. At this point, Singh used a DeVilbiss anti-static wiper from Eastwood to clean the car one last time before the clear was applied.

Eastwood Guns!

35/50The DeVilbiss Finish Line 4 HVLP gun, also called a primer gun or the blue gun is from Eastwood. It will work with both water- and solvent-based paints because it has stainless steel internals. Praveen Singh uses a 1.8–2.2mm tip with a No. 3 air cap for high-build primers.

36/50The black gun is a Tekna Prolite, also from Eastwood. For this job, Singh used a 1.4 tip, T20 aircap, and 19–21 psi at the gun regulator to shoot the base color. This is also the same gun The Harpoon used for his candy-blue base and outlines.

37/50Old chrome paint cups are things of the past. The DeCups system holds the paint in a small flexible plastic inner cup that allows quick color changes and can be sprayed at almost any angle without sputtering air into the paintjob.

38/50The Prolite has a couple of air caps included. The TE10 cap delivers more material at a higher psi than the TE20 cap. Singh uses the TE10 on really hot days where there is no moisture in the air or for spraying in hotter climates like, say, Arizona in the summer.

39/50Water-based paints need more and cleaner air to get the job done. This Air Filter Dyer from Eastwood ensures the compressor air is clean and dry.

40/50In general, basecoats use 1.2–1.4mm tips, and primers use 1.8 and larger. The choice is based on painter preference and paint manufacturer recommendation.

Paints and Stuff

41/50DuPont is now Axalta Coating Systems, an independent brand that uses the same people, chemistry, and quality. It makes the company a bit faster and more aggressive with ideas and customer service.

42/50The etching primer and build primers are the base of paintjob. There is no difference between these products for waterborne and solvent-based basecoats. Good primers prevent pinholes and bubbles from appearing in the paint.

43/50The Harpoon’s custom colors over the lace consist of the binder, the balancer, and the concentrate in whatever color he chooses. The darker colors that make the stripes and panels are straight basecoat. All of these paints are solvent-based. To complete the look, you must bury the graphics in clear.

44/50There are two ways to get a paint code. You can find the factory paint code using NOS chips off the Internet or use the batch number of a paint color that you like. The base blue is 1615499A.

The Last Steps

The key to good-looking graphics is to bury them in clearcoat to get some depth and hide the lines and edges. Elite sprayed clearcoat, color-sanded with 1,000- to 2,000-grit, and repeated spraying and sanding until the car was smooth like a bowling ball and shined like a winter lake. Singh used a trusty Iwata LPH 400 gun with a 1.4 tip and an Orange air cap to spray the solvent-borne clearcoats. After the car cured in the sun for about a week, the clear was buffed with a wool 3M pad using polishing compound, swirl remover, and glaze. Cutting the entire car takes 8–12 shop hours.

45/50

PARTS

Description

PN

Source

Price

Badger/Renegade airbrush

14072

Eastwood

$169.99

Cromax Pro basecoat

1615499A

Axalta

516.50

Cromax Pro controller

WB2040

Axalta

150.00

Cromax Chromaclear

LE 5100S

Axalta

190.00

Cromax Chromaclear activator reducer (clear coat)

LE 1185S

Axalta

150.00

Chroma Premier etching primer

22880S

Axalta

200.00

Chroma Premier etching primer activator

22806S

Axalta

57.80

DeVilbiss anti-static wipe

803553

Eastwood

1.97

DeVilbiss cup and collar

11732

Eastwood

12.99

DeVilbiss sleeve and lid

29955

Eastwood

13.99

DeVilbiss gravity gun and cup

34227

Eastwood

329.99

DeVilbiss Finishline 4 primer gun

12940

Eastwood

149.99

DeVilbiss Tekna ProLite gun

703567

Eastwood

419.99

DeVilbiss coveralls

803598

Eastwood

49.99

Digital pressure gauge

51559

Eastwood

19.99

DVB QC3 filter dryer

130525

Eastwood

199.99

Green masking tape (1⁄8-, 1⁄4-, 1⁄2-inch)

26343,44,32

3M

14.16

HVLP gravity-feed paint gun

34160

Eastwood

409.99

Lace

N/A

Fabric Land

35.00

Paint strainer

14748

Eastwood

12.99

Premier filler

LE 34045

Axalta

250.00

Premier filler activator

LE 1185S

Axalta

100.00

Spray adhesive

Super77

3M

9.99

Tack wipes

14908

Eastwood

12.99

Where Credit Is Due

If you are building a car holed up in your garage by yourself, you are missing the point. We'd like to thank Danny Frechette, Praveen Singh, Santiago, Luis, Grant, Mike and Jeff Johnson at JMS, and The Harpoon for help slinging wrenches.